PORT ANGELES – The Elwha River is, as U.S. rivers go, a dinky thing. It rises in the Olympic Mountains, draining a basin of a bit more than 300 square miles and flowing north some 45 miles before dumping its cargo into Strait of Juan de Fuca just west of Port Angeles, Wash. By my …
Continue reading ‘Getting nature right is hard, Episode XVII: restoring the Elwha’ »
Boarding the Victoria-Port Angeles ferry this morning, a gang of scooters: They got to get on the ferry first.
I was walking on the beach this afternoon when this critter poked his/her head out of the surf just offshore, looked around, then made a dash for the nearby woods. Need some lazyweb help – is it a sea otter? update: Via Miriam Bobkoff, via Twitter – “More likely a river otter. His back feet …
Three of the five restaurants in which we have eaten during our brief visit have had hockey on the television. This includes breakfast this morning at Denny’s. The Kwik-E-Mart where we stopped to procure snacks had Hershey’s chocolate Stanley Cups for sale. Also, hockey on the television. The tendrils of empire extended to the park …
Continue reading ‘Observations on a brief visit to Canada’ »
My particular view of the water world is constrained by scarcity. We don’t move a lot of cargo on the Rio Grande or the Colorado, the two rivers in my immediate field of view. I forget, and our current trip to the Pacific Northwest has reminded me, of the magic of water in service of …
Saw oystercatchers on a Puget Sound beach this week. Their beaks are a freakish orange-red: To which Nora commented, “evolution, wtf?”
I spent time this afternoon watching Caspian terns fishing off the beach next to the Coupeville-Port Townsend ferry. This guy was successful. Later, when I was wandering the backwater nearby, I apparently got too close to the terns’ nesting area. The sent out the call, and five hovered around squawking while one repeatedly dive-bombed me. …
Our waitress at dinner tonight, on finding that Lissa and I are from Albuquerque, asked what brought us to Seattle. “The water,” Lissa said. “We’ve got lots,” the waitress said, pointing with a smile out the window to Elliott Bay. “Happy to share.” Seattle wraps around Elliott Bay, both geographically and historically. I guess that …
Given that I’ve got farming on the brain, our recent Amtrak trip across the western United States was fascinating. The train goes through a lot of farm country, I guess in part because there is a lot of farm country in the western United States. We saw strawberries in Oxnard, the metastasis that is California’s …